Microsoft is offering several of their developer products for free for college students. This list includes: Visual studio 2008, Express Studio 2, Sql Server 2008, Visual Studio 2005, IT Academy Student Pass Training, Windows Server 2008, Game Studio, and Windows Server 2003. Lockheed Martin proxy server blocks the link so you will have to access the site from home.
www.dreamspark.com . If your school is not on this list, then check to see if it is on journeyed.com list at this link
https://www.dreamspark.com/wayf/StudentOption.aspx. I didn’t believe this was legit at first, but the video of Bill Gates explaining the decision to offer the tools for free helped
http://channel8.msdn.com/Posts/2047/ .